Gone with the floods

IN the villages in Bagalkot's Jamkhandi taluk, the police went around asking the people to vacate their homes since the Krishna waters would submerge their houses. Some of them heeded the warning and worked all night to salvage their belongings, especially their cattle, and swam in the darkness, dragging their reluctant buffaloes to the relative safety of places on a higher plain, or by persuading a tractor owner to take them across the risky stretch that was once a road.

They were prepared to risk their lives to save their cattle. Said Raju Naik from Halingali: "They are our source of livelihood. A buffalo costs Rs.20,000 to Rs.40,000, while a bullock costs up to Rs.50,000. More than 1,000 heads of cattle are marooned in the village. We do not know how to bring them to safety." With boats at a premium, villagers resorted to all means to salvage their possessions - bags of maize, television sets, framed photographs of loved ones... They even used jerry cans as lifeboats.

Gangappa Darur, a farmer from Aski village, 90 kilometres from Bagalkot, is heart-broken. He was dreaming of harvesting his sugarcane crop. But standing in knee-deep water at the far end of Asangi village, a few kilometres from Aski, he could merely stare across the sheet of water over his family's 10 acres of land and sugarcane plantations.

On July 29, he says in a voice that betrays his pain, the Krishna swallowed his land, plantation and savings. It has made him poor overnight with debts running to thousands of rupees.

"It didn't rain heavily, but the flood waters just took everything that came in their way. We just watched in horror as it swallowed the land. In a matter of hours my whole land had gone under water. Now I can't even see the tip of my sugarcane plantation, which had grown to nearly six feet."

Darur is a picture of desolation. He and his brothers and their families, he says, had invested on an average Rs.30,000 on every acre of sugarcane crop - with almost all the money coming from borrowings from cooperative banks. They had hoped to harvest at least 600 tonnes of sugarcane. Says Darur: "We were going to harvest it in September. If the crop had survived we would have got Rs.12,000 per tonne of sugarcane."

Parappa Aujankar of Halingali village in Jamkhandi taluk in the State has a similar tale to tell. "Half the village, including my 15 acres of land, is submerged. My sugarcane and maize crops are gone. All we are left with is a portion of the village's main road and stones. There is nothing to eat," he said.